Fermilab Antimatter Lab to Hold Limited Tours

chigun writes "Fermilab is shutting down its normal operations for maintenance for 9 weeks and during this time will be conducting tours of its facilities. The fact that they are the only people capable of producing antimatter is pretty cool as well."

Another anomaly!

[jdawg]

They better be careful, nothing causes a spacial anomaly like a leak in anti-matter containment aboard a good-sized starship.

She's gunna blow captain

[alatesystems]

I'd wait to go until I make sure they have a good Antimatter Containment Field [startrek-voyager.info].

I wouldn't want to be on one of those episodes where they have to jettison the warp core.

Chris

If you can, GO!

[Engineer-Poet]

I have been through the CDF at Fermilab. It is an awe-inspiring experience to see a device, bigger than many houses, devoted to investigating the smallest and most fleeting events currently open to human inspection. The huge sliding shield doors which separate the beam line from the zones which are human-safe during operation will give you some idea of how big, and dangerous, small can be.

TOURS ARE FULL

[hucke]

The tours are full - no more registrations are being accepted.

The answering machine on the phone number given in the Sun-Times article indicates that there is no more space available.

Re:TOURS ARE FULL

[Ayaress]

Hm... so what you're saying is, we basically /.'ed their tour program?

Re:TOURS ARE FULL

[mimdd]

There are only 2 two hour tours on two Sundays two weeks apart. (I wonder if they like the number two?) You'd have to know somebody or win the lottery to get in on one of those...

The only people capable of producing antimatter?

[Zutroy Of Earth]

> The fact that they are the only people capable of producing antimatter is pretty cool as well.

Could you elaborate on that ? I mean, as was mentionned in the article, positrons are used daily in the numerous PET clinics all over the world. In fact, I'm using some for an experiment right now (indirectly of course, since I'm using F18, which decays by emitting a positron :) And it was all produced on site! Were you talking about direct production?

I'll have to read more on that I guess :)

Re:The only people capable of producing antimatter

[erichill]

CERN [web.cern.ch] has been producing antihydrogen [google.com] with their Antimater Factory [web.cern.ch]. To be fair, Fermilab [fnal.gov] has been making antihydrogen [fnal.gov] too.

Folks [stanford.edu] around [people.com.cn] the world [uni-bonn.de] have been producing antiparticles [bartleby.com] for quite some time. They're also created by natural [aas.org] processes [wikipedia.org], but don't last long in high matter density environments.

Re:The only people capable of producing antimatter

[Anonymous Coward]

but in Soviet Russia, Anti-Matter produces YOU!

Only in the world to produce antimatter

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, right! http://livefromcern.web.cern.ch/livefromcern/antim atter/factory/AM-factory00.html

Re:Only in the world to produce antimatter

[Anonymous Coward]

From the site (after removing the extra space) "will produce" Guess what? That's future tense.

anti-matter everywhere

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that they are the only people capable of producing antimatter is pretty cool as well.

Well not really a fact.
I remember experiements with positrons (anti-electrons) in undergraduate physics.
As for anti-protons, they can be produced at other places, ie CERN.

Re:anti-matter everywhere

[Anonymous Coward]

The accepted definition of anti-matter is not anti-particles, its at least anti-hydrogen atoms. Cern only does anti-particles at present.

Re:anti-matter everywhere

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong wrong wrong. I've worked with high energy physicists, have gone to lectures given by them, and have taken classes from them. The term antimatter as used by physicists, the only ones for whom this really matters, means any antiparticle, including positrons, antiprotons, anti-up-quarks, anti-bottom quarks, etc.

When you're talking about mesons there are rather arbitrary definitions as to which are matter and which are antimatter, since all mesons are made of 1 quark and 1 antiquark. The B0 meson, f

Gordon, we have a problem....

[Joff_NZ]

Just as long as when you're there, they don't cause a resonance cascade [zenutech.com]....

PPPL Family Fun Day

[the eric conspiracy]

I went to the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab Family Fun Day once. Really cool to tours the labs there. If you can go to one of these kinds of things I would highly recommend it.

Re:PPPL Family Fun Day

[townmouse]

My family went to the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab Family Fun Day, and all I got was this stupid anti-shirt.